The Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins will battle for control of the Stanley Cup Finals when they face off in Game 5 on Saturday evening.
The Boston Bruins had a chance to seize control of the series but fell to the Blackhawks in overtime in a 6-5 loss.
"I thought we gave them a lot of space," Bruins Coach Claude Julien said. "When we talk about neutral zone, we're not talking about closing a game up and seeing a boring game. We're talking about doing something so that we can regain possession of the puck. And when we regain possession of the puck, we want to get that puck moving in the right direction so we can get a good pace to our game. Sometimes it's misconstrued, I guess, that the neutral zone is about slowing everything down. It's about taking options away. I think Chicago did a great job [on Wednesday]."
The Blackhawks managed to break out of a goal scoring drought against the Bruins with a tremendous six goal effort; the team had only managed one goal throughout Games 2 and 3.
"For us personally, you know you don't get this far, you don't win a Stanley Cup without being pushed up against the wall and being in a few tight spots," said Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews; Toews scored his first goal of the series in Game 4 and his second of the postseason. "That's where we were [Wednesday] night, and for us it was a must-win. We put it all out there, and we treated it as a Game 7. We got the result we wanted. I think there's still some things we can do better, but for the guys in that locker room, we all understood how critical that game was last night. We showed up to play for each other. I don't think the importance of the next one is any smaller than Game 4."
The loss snapped a seven-game home winning streak for the Bruins.
Prediction: Boston wins 2-1.
Start Time: 8 PM EST
TV: NBCSN